How about a sealed NES Super Mario Bros. for $30,100?! I see plenty of VGA-graded sealed auctions of the game for around $1-3 thousand, so I think the price is a fluke.

I still remember in the late 90s when Funcoland was for a time selling used Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt/Track Meet/any combination of the cartridge thereof for 9 cents apiece. Even as a poor kid, I should have known better and bought more than one!

Last edited by schadenfreude on Sat Aug 05, 2017 4:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

This is crazy. I still remember that day in April 2012 when I got to A-Cho arcade in Kyoto early in the morning, and saw the worker there open up the box and install the game. A Japanese dude was standing next to me as we watched. He played it first, then I had a credit. I even took pictures of the unboxing! I have them somewhere (I think).

I never dreamed that just 5 years later that PCB would be worth $6000.

Every Akumajou Dracula-related game continue their steady rise: 50000 yen (close to $500 USD) for a complete in box Akumajou Dracula (Nintendo Famicom).I could have sworn they weren't even half that price early last year but my memory might be wrong.

layzee wrote:Every Akumajou Dracula-related game continue their steady rise: 50000 yen (close to $500 USD) for a complete in box Akumajou Dracula (Nintendo Famicom).I could have sworn they weren't even half that price early last year but my memory might be wrong.

It'd suck to be a new Akumajou collector, that's for sure.

It seems like most of these high bids are coming from proxies, so the buyers are outside of Japan. Easy to tell by the feedback score which is in the 9000+ range on these proxies.

I think it's a combination of factors. Information symmetry, so Westerners buying directly from Japan, and Japanese sellers being more aware of the Western market is one factor. But the biggest factor is certainly the steady demand with declining supply as more and more premium titles end up in collections and don't re-enter the market.

One thing worth mentioning is the Buyee (proxy that is affiliated with Yahoo Auctions) banner that is on pretty much each and every listing. Back then, we would look at a nice auction and think "Aww, I wish I could buy from Japan" (assuming we, as noobs, weren't aware of proxies). But now, even if one wasn't aware that it was possible to buy from Y!JA, the big yellow "Overseas Customers: Click here this items from overseas." leaves no doubt that it is indeed possible. It means that every man and even his grandmother will be your competition for that arcade board or whatever. So the West has indeed caught on. Even more than before. Also, what does "Click here this items from overseas" mean. I think they a word.

By the way, while we're on the topic of Y!J, the sellers there seem to have an ability that eBay sellers don't have: removal of bids after the auction has finished, seemingly without consequence. I guess it's so that they can pick and choose which bidder to sell to. For example, the more strict sellers, in the Terms and Conditions section, might say something like "If you have too many negative feedback, we reserve the right to remove your bids" and that includes after the auction has finished. I don't know what happens after the unwanted winning bid gets canceled. e.g. Does the second high bidder automatically win or does it need to be done manually? I suspect manually, because I, as a winning bidder, had my bids removed post-auction, and instead of selling to the other bidder, they just relist it.

Anyway, moral of the story is I think sometimes there is something fishy going on behind the scenes and take the "winning" prices you see on Y!J with a grain of salt, similar to the "sold" prices on eBay, where the bidder may or may not have paid for the item.

Speaking of proxy price jackings, I think this (Dragon Quest record) is an exemplary example of a hypothetical comparison between a world with and without proxies. The auction begins on the 17th and is basically quiet with no activity until the 24th, the final day...

A world with proxies: Both of the thousand-plus feedback proxies don't appear until the final few hours. Then both proxies battle between themselves until the final price is approximately $450 USD.

A world without proxies: Best case scenario the auction ends at ~$30 USD (if no bidder competition) or ~$160 USD (if outbid by someone else).

That reminds me of a few years ago when I planning on bidding on a fairly rare Final Fantasy Live Concert DVD. There was no activity at all on the auction and the price was 5000 yen (a very good below market value price). Then one bidder made one bid. I checked the bid history and my hopes of getting the auction dropped like a stone when I saw the feedback number (thousands). If I didn't bid, then it would have ended at 5000 yen. But I did a couple of spite bids (sorry) and brought it up to about 15,000 yen (market price) before I decided to stop testing my luck. I honestly wouldn't have paid more than 7500 yen or so, but you know... if I can't get it for a good price, then you can't AKA spite .

Dunno... it's all hypothetical. It only takes two people to duke it out, and trust me, there was plenty of that shit before the proxies came. But yeah, they've definitely added more players to the field and thus, the prices higher. Also ,there's loads more J-sellers selling on Ebay.

Rade wrote:Finally received a reply by posting in a thread at that Gaijin forum:

Gaijin Punch wrote:Dunno... it's all hypothetical. It only takes two people to duke it out, and trust me, there was plenty of that shit before the proxies came. But yeah, they've definitely added more players to the field and thus, the prices higher. Also ,there's loads more J-sellers selling on Ebay.

I'm sure that was the case back then too - but the increasing amount of proxy activity has noticeably bumped prices up overall. The "Gaijin Premium" so-to-speak.

There are occasional bargains to be had from low-feedback J-sellers on eBay. Fixed price listings-wise though, the prices seem a bit homogeneous. I've been waiting for games like Rockman Collection 2 (PS4), Seiken Densetsu Collection (Nintendo Switch), Ikenie to Yuki no Setsuna (PS4/Switch) among other things, but most them seem to have Y!JA + proxy fee prices. Might as well just get 'em from Y!J.